On 02/18/2012 12:35 PM, Charles R Harris wrote:
>>> On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 12:21 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett@gmail.com> <mailto:matthew.brett@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> Hi.
>> On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 12:18 AM, Christopher Jordan-Squire
> <cjordan1@uw.edu <mailto:cjordan1@uw.edu>> wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 11:31 PM, Matthew Brett
> <matthew.brett@gmail.com <mailto:matthew.brett@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 10:18 PM, Christopher Jordan-Squire
> >> <cjordan1@uw.edu <mailto:cjordan1@uw.edu>> wrote:
> >>> On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Sturla Molden
> <sturla@molden.no <mailto:sturla@molden.no>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Den 18. feb. 2012 kl. 05:01 skrev Jason Grout
> <jason-sage@creativetrax.com <mailto:jason-sage@creativetrax.com>>:
> >>>>
> >>>>> On 2/17/12 9:54 PM, Sturla Molden wrote:
> >>>>>> We would have to write a C++ programming tutorial that is
> based on Pyton knowledge instead of C knowledge.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I personally would love such a thing. It's been a while
> since I did
> >>>>> anything nontrivial on my own in C++.
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> One example: How do we code multiple return values?
> >>>>
> >>>> In Python:
> >>>> - Return a tuple.
> >>>>
> >>>> In C:
> >>>> - Use pointers (evilness)
> >>>>
> >>>> In C++:
> >>>> - Return a std::tuple, as you would in Python.
> >>>> - Use references, as you would in Fortran or Pascal.
> >>>> - Use pointers, as you would in C.
> >>>>
> >>>> C++ textbooks always pick the last...
> >>>>
> >>>> I would show the first and the second method, and perhaps
> intentionally forget the last.
> >>>>
> >>>> Sturla
> >>>>
> >>
> >>> On the flip side, cython looked pretty...but I didn't get the
> >>> performance gains I wanted, and had to spend a lot of time figuring
> >>> out if it was cython, needing to add types, buggy support for
> numpy,
> >>> or actually the algorithm.
> >>
> >> At the time, was the numpy support buggy? I personally haven't had
> >> many problems with Cython and numpy.
> >>
> >
> > It's not that the support WAS buggy, it's that it wasn't clear to me
> > what was going on and where my performance bottleneck was. Even after
> > microbenchmarking with ipython, using timeit and prun, and using the
> > cython code visualization tool. Ultimately I don't think it was
> > cython, so perhaps my comment was a bit unfair. But it was
> > unfortunately difficult to verify that. Of course, as you say,
> > diagnosing and solving such issues would become easier to resolve
> with
> > more cython experience.
> >
> >>> The C files generated by cython were
> >>> enormous and difficult to read. They really weren't meant for human
> >>> consumption.
> >>
> >> Yes, it takes some practice to get used to what Cython will do, and
> >> how to optimize the output.
> >>
> >>> As Sturla has said, regardless of the quality of the
> >>> current product, it isn't stable.
> >>
> >> I've personally found it more or less rock solid. Could you say
> what
> >> you mean by "it isn't stable"?
> >>
> >
> > I just meant what Sturla said, nothing more:
> >
> > "Cython is still 0.16, it is still unfinished. We cannot base
> NumPy on
> > an unfinished compiler."
>> Y'all mean, it has a zero at the beginning of the version number and
> it is still adding new features? Yes, that is correct, but it seems
> more reasonable to me to phrase that as 'active development' rather
> than 'unstable', because they take considerable care to be backwards
> compatible, have a large automated Cython test suite, and a major
> stress-tester in the Sage test suite.
>>> Matthew,
>> No one in their right mind would build a large performance library using
> Cython, it just isn't the right tool. For what it was designed for -
> wrapping existing c code or writing small and simple things close to
> Python - it does very well, but it was never designed for making core
> C/C++ libraries and in that role it just gets in the way.
+1. Even I who have contributed to Cython realize this; last autumn I
implemented a library by writing it in C and wrapping it in Cython.
Dag